WIDA: Our Guiding Principles

  • The State of Virginia belongs to the WIDA Consortium. WIDA provides English Language Development standards along with model guidelines such as the Can-Do Indicators which depict what English Learners are able to do at different English Proficiency levels. WIDA also serves English Language Acquisition programs with Guiding Principles which are considered Best Practice for the field of K-12 Language Acquisition.

    WIDA provides school divisions in Virginia with ​a standardized English Proficiency Assessment (WIDA ACCESS 2.0). This assessment is taken annually by all English Learners until they exit, being classified as an English Learner by achieving an overall score on the WIDA ACCESS test of 4.4 or greater.

WIDA ELP Levels

  • The table below outlines how the English Language Proficiency (ELP) levels are determined for English Learners with the WIDA ACCESS test.

  • Students with composite scores of 4.4 or above are considered Formerly LEP (FLEP).  ELs are monitored for two years after exiting EL status.  Former ELs are categorized as M1 (Monitor year 1) or M2 (Monitor year 2).